In less than a week, two stories of brazen sexual assaults on the Tube have hit the headlines. The first involved an arrest for alleged “sexual touching” of fellow passengers when the lights went out on a stranded Elizabeth Line train last Thursday. Now, a man has been jailed for raping a sleeping woman on the Piccadilly Line.
Both should make us as Londoners sick to our stomachs. But what is most horrifying is that both incidents happened in busy carriages — with bystanders who could’ve intervened but didn’t.
Every woman I know makes countless decisions about her safety every day. For me, I always choose the “busiest” route home — and often this includes the Tube. But this notion of “busy = safe” assumes strangers will step in if they see something bad happening. Unfortunately, the past week has shown us that this is not true.
My own experiences of sexual harassment in public taught me the same lesson — including one on a train in London last month. The worst bit wasn’t the guy who couldn’t take no for an answer when I repeatedly told him I wasn’t interested. It was the other group in the train carriage who heard everything and did nothing. Two men with their kids — including a daughter — who just sat there whilst this creep got increasingly aggressive and I became increasingly uncomfortable and scared.
The cherry on the cake was that after the man harassing me left the train, one of them asked me if I was okay. He then said it was “one of those things” that happened to “someone with a face like yours”. Gross.
I’ve thought about this interaction a lot in recent days. Much of the conversation around misogyny rests on men “doing better”. But what exactly does this mean and what should it look like in situations like this?
It is often thought that intervening as a bystander means you have to confront the perpetrator, which risks aggression and harm. However, one of the most effective ways to intervene is to distract the victim. It is simple but can de-escalate the situation as the victim feels less alone and the perpetrator is aware someone has clocked their behaviour.
Going beyond individual scenarios, we — collectively as Londoners — need to shift the burden away from individual women and onto society at large. I’m tired of the last words I say to my friends when we hang out being: “text me when you get home safe”, making up a fictitious boyfriend when approached by a man, or having a friend on speed dial when walking home. All tiny things we do to pretend to ourselves that we feel safe - that instead just show who is expected to shoulder the burden for the misogyny we experience.
We can’t end gender-based violence and harassment overnight. But women should be able to trust that if the worst should happen, the people around them should at least try to stop it.
